Third Party Watch

One of the recurring themes of third party politics in America seems to be the phenomenon of the “hostile takeover.” A disgruntled major party politician, an eccentric multi-millionaire, or perhaps a group of major party factional schemers decides that rather than working within the party of their putative loyalty, or perhaps forming a new party, [...]

Mary Ruwart’s Candidacy Cause for Celebration
by John David Christensen, Vice-chair Vermont Libertarian Party

Dr. Mary J. Ruwart’s recently announced candidacy for the Libertarian Party’s (LP) presidential nomination should be cause for celebration by libertarian activists everywhere. Or at least by those who desire a movement that is as broadly-based and spirited as the revolution Ron Paul [...]

Libertarian Party activist (and Ron Paul supporter) Rolf Lindgren just went after John McCain on the Populist Party blog:

John McCain has gone on the record, supporting 100 years of war in the Middle East:

McCain: 100 years in Iraq “would be fine with me”

We have already had one Hundred Years’ War, which is one too many [...]

I don’t think this has been written about here and I think that this is an issue that readers here would be highly interested in. In Michigan, various third parties (Green Party, Libertarian Party, Reform Party, Socialist Party, US Taxpayers Party) came together to form the Michigan Third Party Coalition. Despite obvious differences in ideology (i.e. the Socialist Party and US Taxpayers Party are diametrically opposed on almost every issue), these parties have come together to try to reform Michigan electoral law, with its excessively restrictive guidelines. I spent most of my day working on the site (www.mithirdparties.org) and thought I might as well end it by posting about the group here. I encourage third parties in other states with restrictive ballot access laws to form similar groups. Forgive my post for being short, but I’m tired and about to fall asleep.

Old-time libertarians will recall a lot of the names dropped in this 1988 High Times article about then Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul: Andre Marrou, Ed Clark, Dick Randolph, Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Roger McBride, Tonie Nathan, David Bergland, Eric Garris, Paul Jacob, Tim Lewis, Norma Jean Almodovar, Mark Ford, and Ed Crane. [...]

GOPUSA has published an article by Eric Dondero about Ron Paul:

In the Fall of ‘91 Burt Blumert, Paul’s longtime partner with his Camino Coins Gold business in Burlingame, CA and the Ron Paul Investment Letter, finally secured permission from Paul to launch an exploratory committee, and to raise money for the effort. Paul himself wanted [...]

Now onto a political party, that, while being a state and not a national party, it nevertheless attracted a good amount of attention at the time, being the latest attempt to qualify a white supremacist political party and it’s alleged candidates on the ballot.

The White Peoples Party was started in 2005 by members of the [...]

“Your days of punching the Republican Party in the nose without having someone swing back are over,” wrote Chuck Muth to Libertarians in 2001.

A couple of days ago, Muth scribed, “And if the GOP doesn’t get its limited-government act together soon, the party that replaced the Whigs could well end up going the way of [...]

I have decided to do something new here on Third Party Watch. I will begin a series on third-parties that are inactive, small, and nearly defunct, yet are still trying to maintain life support of some kind.
Basically, it will be on third-parties whose status is much like the Prohibition Party.

The first party that I shall [...]

Crockford provides some interesting third party historical tidbits:

In 1966, in a speech given in Frogmore, South Carolina, the Reverend Martin Luther King said, “You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out [...]

I hate to rehash old news, but I was just thinking that we haven’t received disgraced campaign manager Allen Hacker’s final report in last year’s Badnarik for Congress race (CD-10 in Texas).

Minneapolis City Councilman Cam Gordon, a member of the Green Party, on his 2005 election, and his activist and candidate history.

Includes discussion of his campaign strategies & experiences and of Minneapolis’ diverse Ward Two. Interviewed at Minneapolis City Hall on August 6th, 2007 by California Green Mike Feinstein.

This is kind of a funny video from last year, during the fallout from her punching of a Capitol police office. Congresswoman McKinney gets caught with her microphone on after she dodges some questions and walks out of the room, so she comes back and makes it clear that the audio is not allowed [...]

This is sort of a strange, heavily sarcastic, and very uncomfortable interview with Sandra Bernhard on the David Letterman show back in 1988.

I don’t think he was being particularly serious, but when the subject of politics comes up Dave jokes that he’s planning on voting for Ron Paul. It’s about 2 minutes into the [...]

In advance of his expected run for re-election in 2002, this cute but relatively lame video game was designed but not actually released. Some of the concepts are kind of funny and it might make for a fun online game…

California Green activist Mike Feinstein appears on a television debate program to discuss the 1996 Presidential election and Ralph Nader’s first run for office.

And another video from 11 days later at the Green Party’s national convention in which Nader was nominated. This includes a VP acceptance speech (via video) from Winona LaDuke, followed [...]

I was looking for a quote from Andre Marrou earlier this evening and I wound up stumbling onto this item from a 1996 edition of LP News. Here’s the link along with a few amusing quotes and observations…

http://www.lp.org/lpn/9612-Browne.html

Basically they say that Harry Browne’s showing of about 470,000 was a disappointment but a good [...]

Ron Paul being interviewed as the Libertarian nominee on a television program during the 1988 Presidential campaign…

Libertarian nominee Ron Paul appears on the absolutely insane Morton Downey, Jr. program and engages in a heated “debate” with the host…

PART ONE OF THREE:

PART TWO OF THREE:

PART THREE OF THREE:

It’s Friday and there’s not that much going on, so here are a few clips from YouTube that I came across somewhat by accident. They relate to the 1992 Perot for President campaign.

The first is a tiny snip from one of Perot’s network TV infomercials:

The second is stand-up comedy from Dennis Miller, who [...]

A negative ad that hits Congressman Bob Barr for his stance against the use of medical-marijuana…

And four years later, Bob Barr joins the party and addresses the national convention….

Christopher Hansen, Nevada IAP State Chairman

I was reading about Republican President Benjamin Harrison on The White House web site and had to laugh at how similar he is to George W. Bush. How can we blame Georgie W. when he is only being a good Republican and following in a long line of Republicans that [...]

The latest issue of Green Pages includes a list of the 34 Green mayors from around the United States since 1991. This includes 10 elected mayors and 24 appointed ones, usually city councilmembers who have been elevated to the position of mayor for one or two year terms. While most of them have [...]

The Libertarian Party turns 35 years old today and the LPHQ folks appear to have put together this nice little video:

It’s a nifty little video recap of the last 35 years, including lots of cool video clips from just about all the Presidential campaigns. Although Hospers didn’t exactly “EARN” that electoral vote… but anyway. [...]

Here’s an old story from LP News in December of 1998…

http://www.lp.org/lpn/9812-Randall.html

Any thoughts?

With the recent death of Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party has lost a very prominent leader and spokesman. I decided to take a little bit of a look back at Browne’s two Presidential campaigns…

He was the only man to ever serve as the LP’s candidate for President more than once. In 1996, his [...]